Probably one of the games I've played the most back in the early 2000s, and for good reasons. When 3D Platformers were, thankfully, dying out, you'd start to see, often from SONY owned studios, weird hybrids like Ratchet & Clank and this game right here.

Imagine GTA (that's easy) and attach a 3D Platformer with guns and powers to it (that's not as easy), add some Y2K Cartoony Edge to it and you'll get peak videogame.

This time around the guys @ Naughty Dog actually had to think a bit harder and not just make a 3D Platformer with no Level Select screen. The Open World makes sense here as you have vehicles which you actually have to use to move from Point A to Point B, and this time you actually have to dodge stuff, and not just flick the left analog stick up all the time like in the first game. They even bothered to put in a simple Police Chase system like the GTA games.

When you're not flying around in the open world, you get a bunch of missions and side-missions, which range from the usual races to hide and seek or destruction contracts, nothing special nowadays, but definitely fresh for a platformer back then. The story, while convoluted (comes with the territory for time travel nonsense, InFamous is very much the same) it's miles more engaging than whatever happened in the previous game. The only slight issue I have with this, which is more of a nitpick, is the difficulty curve spike in that particular mission, you know which one, no.. not that one! You just hypertap and you'll be fine.

Played this after Jak 2 Renegade, was expecting a bit more. Ended up beating the whole game in about 5 hours and going "Okay" at the end.

If you've played one of the many 3D Platformers from back in the 90s, well, it's exactly like that, only difference is that this one doesn't have a level select screen and you'll have to journey your way through the world (thankfully there are some conveniently placed Teleports every now and then).

Honestly it feels like this seamless world mechanic was the whole focus of the game, which is quite pointless when you realize it adds nothing, mechanically speaking. The whole Colored Eco powers while cool and somewhat contextualized in lore, also don't really offer anything new or groundbreaking you haven't seen in any other 3D Platformer game from yesteryear.

Personally you may want to play this just so you know what happens in the much better sequel.

Personally the most bored I've been while playing a RE game. I cannot talk about RE6 as this was the last straw for me, but think about everything you like about RE4, and imagine a game that doesn't do anything to improve on that formula, but worse, sometimes it managed to make a few steps back:

Core gameplay is the same, visual are worse, barely looks like an horror game thanks to the generic pìss filter, co-op was unnecesary and broke immersion, partner's AI is braindead and vastly inferior to Ashley (at least you could put her in the Trash where she belongs), weapon shop has no charm, it just appears at the end of each chapter out of nowhere, the inventory system is barely put together and extremely limited, the gore is abysmal, might as well not be there, most weapons feel generic, the turret sections ruin the pace of the game, they happen during some bosses too, which are mid at best, the stupid quick time events during cutscenes are still here for some reason.

Seriously, I'm struggling to find something I could call an improvement over RE4, I guess a prompt for attacking downed enemies? I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, since this is something one could do in the previous game as well w/out a prompt. Let's be honest here for a minute, the few people who overhype this thing like there is no tomorrow aren't exactly RE fans, they're mostly meatheads coming from CoD or whatever other game looking for some couch co-op in an era where every videogame was a carbon copy online FPS, heck even the developers themselves admitted they wanted the Call of Duty audience so, yeah... good for them. Now they're gonna remake this and who knows wth they'll cook, not looking forward to it. For any actual RE fan, you'll most definitely have more fun playing the previous game.

This game not only managed to start one of the most, often controversial, and definitely qualitatively speaking, never consistent (to this day) well known IP around, but this is also the game that more than any other proved how we really were fascinated by literal keys jangling in front of our faces back when the 7th Gen of Consoles was just kicking off.

There's not much to say here, at least for us non nostalgia-drivern shills, as the gameplay loop in this is beyond simple and perpetually stuck in a very easy mode you cannot change, no matter what. When the novelty of the climbing system wears off (in about 15 or so minutes) you'll be left with a really easy and below average combat system, even for the time, that is vast as a puddle and shallow as a glass of water and a "find random stuff around the map with no indicators" waste of time which was never fun to begin with, not just here, but in any single Open World Game it's been featured in.

Don't think I've ever died in any of the AC games, if not by accident, while trying to fiddle around with the controls during the climbing sections, which are sometimes really clunky the moment you find yourself in corners or parts with more than one snap point during a jump. The enemies pose no challenge whatsoever, thus rendering any of the stealth mechanics in this pretty useless. I guess only the narrative saved it, more or less, as the downtimes during the modern day sections were quite annoying. Personally I stopped at AC Brotherhood as that's when I realized I was completely and utterly burned out on this Open World formula provided by UbiSoft. The sequel isn't much better either.

Decided to re-play this again recently just to experience the additional content and I have to say, this game still holds up. There are probably better Metroidvanias around but I bet in none of those you can stop time, go around the enemies and "nothign personnel, kid" them with a bunch of knives until they explode. So yeah... it's peak!

My only gripe is that the RPG component of this is very basic, could've used more item management (yes, unironically) and the game itself is quite short for a metroidvania standard. Also, did the devs forgot to add Cirno to the Boss Rush mode? Kinda lame.

The dev for this game, potemki11, just woke up one day and decided to make one of the best Shin Megami Tensei clones and make it even better by adding Touhou characters to it.

Difficulty is perfectly balanced, there is nothing in here that's as frustrating as most other SMT games or even Touhou RPGs, except maybe the Secret Boss? Which is debatable as it's really easy to cheese if you've been paying attention to your stats altering moves.

The developer isn't even done with this game btw, he's still adding new content to it to this day, including a customizeable level/map editor, so I will probably go back to this in the near future.

If you're like me and you happen to like both Touhou and Pain, as well as the thrill of navigating convoluted dungeons then you will love this game nearly as much as I do!

Played this gem for months, aimlessly grinding for hours in the upper extra floors just to get past OP bosses is an experience like any other. If you don't like LoT now, you will be forced to once you try it!

The only reason why I did not gave it 5 Stars is because Labyrinth of Touhou 2 exists, which is even better, and a third game is on its way as well!